Category: Randall
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How to Access Health Records from Wolston Park
If you were a victim of sexual assault as a child in Wolston Park Mental Hospital, or any other institution, you can apply for compensation. You can do this through the redress scheme. If you want to apply for access to your health records through a Right to Information Request, click here. If they deny…
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Review into Wolston Park Mental Hospital
On 8 August 2024, Shannon Fentiman, the then Minister for Health, announced an investigation into Wolston Park Mental Hospital, covering the period from the 1950s until its closure in 2000. The Queensland branch of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists released a statement a few days later supporting the historical investigation. Following…
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It’s never too late for truth or justice
My appeal to the Qld Information Commissioner to access 196 pages of my brother’s patient records has been successful. I’m grateful to this office & Qld Department of Health for this outcome. After 44 years, its been cathartic, validating, disturbing but healing to finally have some answers to questions that have haunted me all that…
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Painting Randall

I wish to thank Debbie Manson the Brisbane based artist who has bought my brother, Randall Scott Carrington back to life through her art. This painting pictures my brother Randall Scott Carrington with his blond-tinged sunburnt hair, shirtless standing in the driveway sporting Sunglasses, board shorts and black thongs. That was his uniform – even…
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It’s time for a truth commission: Wolston Park Mental Asylum

Wolston Park Mental Hospital was a place of experimentation of psychotic drugs and electric shock treatment in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Patients like my brother Randall Carrington were given electric shock treatment, drugged, caged, abused and sexually assaulted. It’s time for a truth commission into Wolston Park. The terms of reference for such an…
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Right to Information of Randall’s Records Denied

My RTI request for my dead brother’s records from Wolston Park Mental Hospital has been denied. 196 pages kept secret. Why were young gay men locked up in Pearce House? Was it lawful? Was it punishment for being gay? Only an Inquiry into the historical abuses of patients in Wolston Park can answer these questions.
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Betty Taylor adds her voice to the calls for an Inquiry into Wolston Park Mental Hospital
Betty Taylor is widely known and revered for her tireless advocacy on behalf of survivors of domestic family violence in Qld. In this podcast for Remembering Randall, she tells a different story. In 2017 Betty was commissioned by the then Minister of Health Cameron Dick to undertake an investigation and provide two reports (one confidential…
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Former Wolston Park Staff reflect on changes in mental health treatments, from shock treatment to Psychotropic Drugs: More Humane? Watch the video
Wolston Park Mental Hospital went through various stages of its approach to ‘treating’ those regarded as mentally ill or insane, from containment and punishment, to the experimental use of electric shock treatment, and the use of a range of powerful psychotropic drugs. In this video created for the Remembering Goodna Exhibition at Brisbane Museum in…
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Dr Yorick Smaal, distinguished historian talks about how same sex attracted boys like my brother Randall have been punished by prisons, schools & mental hospitals.
The notorious Pearce House, Wolston Park Mental Hospital where my brother was caged in 1978-79 for being gay.

